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Dr. Robert W. Doms Named Chief of Pathology at CHOP

Nationally recognized HIV/AIDs research joins CHOP

September 5, 2012 — Robert W. Doms, MD, PhD, was selected as pathologist-in-chief and chair of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine of The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), effective September 15, 2012. Dr. Doms joins CHOP from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania where he was chairman of the Department of Microbiology. He is a nationally recognized researcher in the study of HIV/AIDS.

Dr. Doms was recommended by a search committee chaired by Bryan A. Wolf, MD, PhD, who also served as interim pathologist-in-chief following the March 2012 departure of Jeffrey A. Golden, MD, who accepted a position at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston. “I am very pleased that Dr. Doms has agreed to join us at CHOP and we look forward to his contribution to an exceptional Pathology and Laboratory Medicine program,” said Steven M. Altschuler, MD, chief executive officer. “Bob is internationally known and recognized for his discoveries in HIV/AIDS research and his reputation for excellence will certainly enhance our efforts at CHOP.”

Well known to many in the international research community, Dr. Doms’ efforts have led to significant discoveries about the way in which the AIDS virus enters cells and how the disease develops. He is a leader in the virus entry field and has won a number of research awards, including an Elizabeth Glaser Scientist Award from the Pediatric AIDS Foundation and the Pfizer Young Investigator Award from the American Society for Investigative Pathology. In addition to studying HIV entry, members of his lab have studied a number of emerging viral diseases, including West Nile virus, Rift Valley Fever virus, and Crimean Congo Hemorrhagic fever virus. The goals of these projects were to understand how viruses enter cells, and how this can be stopped.

He is a member of the American Society for Clinical Research and earned his MD and PhD in cell biology from Yale University in 1988. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship with Bernie Moss, MD, PhD, at the NIH where he studied vaccinia virus assembly as well as the HIV-1 Env protein, and also completed an anatomic pathology residency. He arrived at Penn in 1992 as an assistant professor in Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, was named an associate professor in 1998 and named chairman of the Department of Microbiology in 2001.